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Selling With Social Media: A New Direction for Businesses
29 Social Media Tools Recommended by the Pros
How to Get Customers to Post Instagram Pictures
How Constant Contact Uses Pinterest to Reach a B2B Market
Instagram Direct: This Week in Social Media
Facebook Changes Like Buttons: This Week in Social Media
18 Social Media SEO Resources to Improve Your Search Ranking
26 Ways Social Media Marketers Use Smartphone Apps

Selling With Social Media: A New Direction for Businesses

Posted: 25 Feb 2014 03:37 AM PST

To learn about why you need to rethink the sales process in this social age, I interview Tom Martin for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast.

The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner.

It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting).

In this episode, I interview Tom Martin, author of The Invisible Sale: How to Build a Digitally Powered Marketing and Sales System to Better Prospect, Qualify and Close Leads. His agency is Converse Digital.

Tom shares the concept of painless prospecting and propinquity.

You'll learn how to succeed in the changing social media sales landscape, and how your business can embrace these new strategies.

Share your feedback, read the show notes and get the links mentioned in this episode below!

Tom believes it's more about how buyers buy than the way businesses sell. With the Internet, people can hide behind the anonymity of Google search.

You can do all your pre-purchase research without having to talk to a salesperson. You only have to talk to a person once you've made a short list of companies you are interested in and want to close the deal.

Buyers use Google search for pre-purchase research.

Today's buyer prefers this process, as it's easier and more efficient. With this in mind, companies have to adjust.

In the early days, the power was with the salesperson, but with the knowledge available online today, the power is in the hands of the consumer.

Tom says as a business, you have to stop thinking about how you sell because you don't really sell anymore. Instead you help buyers make a buying decision. When they make their decision, hopefully it will be in your favor. Although it won't always be the case.

You'll discover how your system needs to be set up properly and the approach you need to consider.

If you have a really good product or service, more often than not, you will win the conversion. Most people are turned off by people selling to them. The best way is to show them that you're willing to help and that you always have their best interests at heart.

Listen to the show to find out more about how the approach to sales has changed.

An example of a business that has embraced new ways to sell

Tom talks about a camera store called Adorama based in New York that he used as a case study in his book, The Invisible Sale. Adorama only has one store, but does business in all 50 US states and 5 countries.

The camera store Adorama is used as a case study in The Invisible Sale.

Adorama has two sides to their business, B2C and B2B. Regardless of which side you look at, they approach it the same way. Their philosophy is to sell by sharing original educational content.

Even though it's a photography store, they sell more than just cameras. They've built a Learning Center that includes Adorama TV, which is one of their huge content pieces. The Learning Center is a treasure trove of educational content.

There is everything from learning how to shoot a photo to discovering the best equipment.

Although their approach is to educate, when you watch one of their videos, you'll notice easy-to-follow links to products below the video. You'll find out how they used YouTube to allow people to reach that product.

All products mentioned throughout Adorama’s videos are linked below the video for easy access.

In 2010, they saw a general growth curve, mainly due to the educational content they provide.

The moral of the lesson is that if you can make your buyer smarter and better because they are doing business with you, then Tom believes you will succeed in selling more to that buyer.

Listen to the show to hear why Tom relates it to fly-fishing and how it's the same with modern content marketing.

What is a social agent and why is it important?

Tom describes a social agent as someone who doesn't necessarily buy from you, but recommends you to a friend or colleague who might buy from you. A lot of the time, social agents can be your most valuable customers that you never do business with. They're the best customers you'll have.

You need to draw in your social agents through educational pieces. A relationship is formed with your brand or company when they see value in what you are doing.

You'll learn how Tom became a huge social agent for Adorama.

Listen to the show to find out the importance of empowering everyone to be a social agent for your company.

In The Invisible Sale, you reveal a process that helps people sell without cold-calling and advertising. Can you explain the process?

Tom calls the process "painless prospecting." The concept is a spin on inbound marketing. The core difference is that most content and inbound strategies leverage search and keyword optimization.

As more and more businesses discover and deploy keyword optimization and SEO strategies, Tom believes that only so many will win the battle. It's going to get more competitive and much more difficult.

Whereas painless prospecting is built on the concept of propinquity.

Propinquity is a scientific theory that powers the formation of relationships. It says that if you bump into someone a lot, the higher the likelihood of you touching them more often, reading their content or meeting them in person, the more likely you are to like that person, providing you like them each time you meet.

You need to build your business on the concept of propinquity.

Tom's painless prospecting philosophy is that you don't walk away from SEO, but do get off your own blog. You need to think and care more about putting great content on other people's blogs. Tom advises you to treat every blog as your own. When you put content in these places, they are called Propinquity Points.

You'll learn how to develop a strategy for this to make sure you stay top of mind.

Tom shares a quick overview of where you can find places to provide content, but there is a whole chapter (Building a Painless Prospecting Platform) in his book where the process is laid out.

Check out the chapter on Building a Painless Prospecting Platform.

If you pay attention to your industry or your prospects' industry, you can usually sit down and list all the places that your prospective customers congregate online and offline. You'll learn where these places might be. If you know your industry well enough, you will already know of 7-10 places without thinking. This is your first list.

You'll discover how social listening software such as Radian6 or Sysomos can be beneficial to finding propinquity points for you.

Sysomos can help you find propinquity points for your business.

Once you find these points, you can create more opportunities for people to stumble across you and your brand. It's a great way to get a good positive impression.

When you get off your own blog, your buyer doesn't have to be in active research mode to stumble upon you. They might then click through to your blog and possibly sign up to read it. You'll learn what can happen if you only stay on your own blog.

You could have people sign up to your blog who weren’t in active research mode.

You'll discover why you do your best content work when you write for someone else.

Tom advises you to write 4 or 5 posts for other blogs, staged over a 2-week period and keep an eye on your Google Analytics to see what happens. You'll notice that you drive more traffic back to your site.

The more you write for these larger audiences, the bigger your chance of people coming over to your site to check out your content. For every 100 people who read your content somewhere else, around 5% will convert to signups. This is how to build propinquity at a blog base.

Tom is convinced that the way to win today is to get out there and treat yourself like a media empire.

Listen to the show to learn about the invisible component in Tom's book title.

What marketers should avoid when using content to try to get a sale

Tom says there are two things marketers should avoid. Most people produce content at the wrong level. It's normally the same single unit of content across their blog and podcast. So most feel that one blog post a week is enough without writing for others.

First you have to think about content creation as an ecosystem. You should never create one piece of content once. You should look for ways to repurpose it or even rechannel it.

Make sure you repurpose your blog content.

You'll learn about the ways you can turn one piece of content into more content.

Secondly, Tom states that there is a belief, especially among inbounders, that every piece of content needs to have a call to action. Although research proves calls to action get more conversions, Tom doesn't really believe it. He feels there is still value in pure education.

You need to go out and educate your buyer. Don't ask or expect anything in return. Tom states that most buyers know how to buy; you shouldn't need to rely on a call to action for them to have enough confidence to contact you.

Listen to the show to find out why your content should always be of value.

This Week's Social Media Question

Debra Keirce, a professional artist, asks, "As an artist, sometimes it will take years between contacting potential collectors and receiving a commission or a purchase. Are there specific social media tools that can be used to help develop, encourage and maintain these long-term relationships, so that the leads don't go cold and people will recommend you to their friends, when at times they are not necessarily looking to buy themselves?"

DebKArt.

This is a great question on how to keep top of mind with prospects who aren't ready to buy.

The first thing I would recommend is to make sure you listen to this particular podcast for some great ideas. Here are a few examples of what you could do with your business.

Create time-lapse videos that showcase your processes
Create educational pieces
Become the conduit to prospects

When you put yourself in the position of the resource person rather than the salesperson, every time you communicate with prospects, it's a way to stay top of mind. If, and when, they are ready to buy, they are more likely to come back to you or pass your details on to another prospect. You need to have regular touch points.

You'll hear an example of what I received from people in the voice talent industry when I was a prospect and how my realtor markets his business using social media.

I hope you find this helpful.

Call in and leave your social media–related questions for us and we may include them in a future show.

Listen to the show to learn more and let us know how this works for you.

Other Show Mentions

Social Media Success Summit 2013

Social Media Success Summit 2013 is a special online conference designed to help you master social media marketing (brought to you by Social Media Examiner).

Social Media Success Summit 2013.

Forty-five of the world's leading social media pros will show you how. Instructors include Jay Baer (author, Youtility), Chri s Brogan (co-author, Impact Equation), Mari Smith (co-author, Facebook Marketing), Michael Stelzner (founder, Social Media Examiner), Mark Schaefer (author, Return on Influence), Jesse Stay (author, Google+ for Dummies), Amy Porterfield (co-author, Facebo ok Marketing All-in-One for Dummies) and experts from General Electric, Sony, E! Online, Kelly Services and Discovery Channel–just to mention a few. Fully online. Click here to learn more.

We have finalized our brand panels and here are a few killer ones.

Instagram panel with Sony and E! Online
Online video panel with Discovery Communications and Salesforce
Pinterest marketing with Whole Foods and Target
Twitter marketing with GE and American Express
Facebook marketing with Walmart and NASA

We've got some incredible brands that will share what they do with social media. This is just a sample. There is an enormous amount of how-to content.

It's an online conference, which means you don't need to travel anywhere. It's spread over an entire month and it's live. If you want to learn more about it, be sure to check it out.

Key takeaways mentioned in this episode:

Ways to subscribe to the Social Media Marketing podcast:

What do you think? What are your thoughts on selling with social media? Please leave your comments below.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends:

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29 Social Media Tools Recommended by the Pros

Posted: 25 Feb 2014 03:00 AM PST

Cindy King

By Cindy King
Published February 25, 2014

Are you looking for ways to enhance your social media marketing?

Do you want new tools to simplify your job?

We asked a group of social media pros for the hottest social media tools they use today.

Check them out to see if these social media tools are a good fit for you!

#1: RivalIQ

Jay Baer

Figuring out precisely what works in social media is a tricky (yet entirely necessary) proposition.

I'm always seeking to improve clicks, shares and social media engagement on my own content as well as our Convince and Convert clients' content.

Recently, I started using RivalIQ to get at what's working in social, and this easy-to-use, reasonably priced analysis platform produces a steady stream of insights while saving me a ton of time.

Here, I set up a collection of consumer products companies (RivalIQ calls them a "landscape") for a strategic plan we're building. With just a click or two, I can find the top 50 Facebook posts (by engagement rate or total engagement behaviors) among these companies over the past 7, 14, 30 or 90 days.

RivalIQ provides competitive intelligence.

Plus, I can click another button and export the snazzy charts and graphs to PDF or PowerPoint instantly.

RivalIQ also has a nifty alerts function, so if a company I'm monitoring publishes a disproportionately successful tweet, Facebook post or LinkedIn post—or even changes their website home page copy—I get an email letting me know.

Today, as the industry matures, social media is less about colonization, and more about optimization. RivalIQ helps me learn and improve every day. I like the software so much, I immediately invested in the company.

If you want to see an entire landscape and kick the tires, I built one just for Social Media Examiner readers that you can access here. It includes many of the major national Olympics organizations and their social media.

Jay Baer is the founder of Convince & Convert.

#2: Pocket

Mari Smith

One of the biggest challenges in social media is how to consistently curate and create exceptional content. A wonderful tool I love to use for the curation part is Pocket!

Pocket (formerly Read It Later) allows you to consume and save a wide variety of online articles, which you can then post to Twitter or Facebook, schedule via Buffer or review at a later time.

Save a variety of online articles to share with your audience at a later date.

Pocket has many options for integrating with your existing systems: a browser-based option at GetPocket, a Chrome Extension with Twitter integration (see screenshot below) and a mobile app for all operating systems.

Pocket Chrome extension with Twitter integration.

Plus, Pocket is integrated into more than 500 apps including Flipboard, Tweetbot (my favorite Twitter mobile app) and even Facebook's new mobile reader app, Paper.

As a regular practice in my company, first I take time to review my Twitter and Facebook lists and quickly save the standout articles to Pocket, adding appropriate tags for various social networks.

Then, my content manager reviews Pocket and pulls out the articles I've saved, adding them to the collection she's already cherry-picked and scheduled for me on HootSuite. The main platform I use my Pocket articles on is Twitter, followed by my Facebook page where I add a tag. I like to schedule my own Facebook posts directly on my page, as I always add a personal narrative.

Give Pocket a try if you haven't already; I'm sure you'll love it, too!

Mari Smith is a leading social media strategist and premier Facebook marketing expert. She is co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day and author of The New Relationship Marketing.

#3: ShareRoot

Ekaterina Walter

I am most impressed by ShareRoot because it is an all-in-one solution for Pinterest. The company offers a suite of self-service tools that you can use to manage content on Pinterest, drive Pinterest engagement and produce sales.

ShareRoot is such a time-saver because it lets you schedule pins. It also has a cross-promotional pin creator, board cover creator and a Pinterest tab for Facebook so you can convert your Facebook fans to Pinterest followers.

ShareRoot's toolset helps brands manage their Pinterest page.

Two of ShareRoot's core tools, contest management and Pinterest targeted advertising, help you achieve deeper connections while growing your engagement rates.

ShareRoot is currently testing its flash sales tool that helps generate revenue and turns your followers and interested pinners into paying customers.

Ekaterina Walter is the co-founder and CMO of Branderati, and author of The Power of Visual Storytelling.

#4: PowToon

Brian Carter

I want to tell you about PowToon (an easy way to make videos), but first let's look at YouTube, because great content doesn't help if no one sees it.

I'm always on the lookout for the next digital marketing opportunity that will give a big advantage over competitors. Right now, that opportunity is YouTube PreRoll (a.k.a. YouTube in-stream) advertising. The barrier to entry is creating a high-quality video, which can be expensive because even the most affordable video creation companies charge at least $300 to $1500.

Enter PowToon. It's one of the easiest and cheapest ways to create a good video and—this is the crazy part—it's free.

PowToon gives you an animated video workspace and makes it easy to create your own videos.

Having a PowToon video got Visioniz a 37% increase in sales and boosted SimpleWifi's conversion rate by 300%.

If you take your time with PowToon, you can create something that's more than adequate in a matter of hours and start taking advantage of YouTube PreRoll the next day.

To prove my point, I made this PowToon in just over an hour, and it was my first one! The quality and speed can only get better from there.

[embedded content]

Brian Carter is the author of The Like Economy and LinkedIn For Business.

#5: EveryoneSocial

Jesse Stay

My favorite social media tool is EveryoneSocial. The app encourages businesses to engage employees as "social ambassadors," making them key parts of the company's social media strategy.

The website empowers employees to find engaging content they can share with their followers on different social networks using EveryoneSocial's powerful content discovery engine.

Alternatively, EveryoneSocial can recommend articles and websites for employees to share, giving your company a very large voice that's much more personal than a generic Facebook page or Twitter account.

EveryoneSocial helps employees be brand ambassadors.

EveryoneSocial provides a powerful analytics engine to track how much employees are sharing, as well as how well they're driving clicks. The analytics even allow you to get employees competing against each other for the top sharing spot.

EveryoneSocial drives home an important paradigm shift in social media. The future of social media is not just Facebook pages, Google+ pages or Twitter accounts. The future of social is in empowering individuals—including your employees—to share your products one with another.

The more you promote and empower your employees and key player social presences, the stronger social media success you'll have in the future.

Jesse Stay is the founder and owner of Stay N' Alive Productions, LLC.

#6: vCita

Jon Loomer

My current favorite tool is vCita. It's a plugin that manages the purchase and booking process of my one-on-one coaching sessions. vCita calls itself a "client engagement platform for small businesses."

If you've ever been to my site, you've undoubtedly seen the active engage flyout that happens at the bottom right.

The active engage flyout on JonLoomer.com.

When you click the Schedule Now button, you are taken directly to my calendar where I've set specific times and days that are open for one-on-one sessions. vCita also dynamically syncs with my Google calendar, so whenever I add an event that is a conflict, vCita will block it off on my calendar.

vCita lets visitors choose a meeting date and time on your calendar.

One-on-one sessions were a minor part of my business until about six months ago. It wasn't until I started using vCita that they became a major part. In fact, I was forced to raise the price of my sessions to keep up with demand!

Jon Loomer is a Facebook marketing coach, author, speaker and strategist.

#7: OptinMonster

Ian Cleary

Growing the number of email subscribers for your blog is a great way to build a relationship with potential customers, but it's challenging to convert visitors to subscribers.

OptinMonster is a WordPress plugin that helps you create attention-grabbing opt-in forms. The plugin is really well designed and you can get a variety of opt-in boxes up and running very quickly.

Create attention-grabbing opt-in forms.

One of the most interesting features of OptinMonster is the Exit Intent feature. You can create a popup box to collect emails and set it up so that it only appears when your website visitor is about to leave your website.

OptinMonster tracks the position of your visitor's mouse pointer and if they move it outside the main window, the popup appears. The plugin also has options for a floating footer bar and a slide-in box.

Ian Cleary is the founder of RazorSocial.

#8: smqueue

Neal Schaffer

I have become a BIG fan of smqueue.

If you have over 100 blog posts or pieces of content that you want to share once or twice a day, this tool is a great way to automate those social media posts. You can share them on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

You can set recurring queue time slots.

While some may cringe at the thought of any automation in social media, numerous studies have shown that promoting the same post multiple times helps your content become more discoverable in social media. Other than paid social, using some element of automation is the only way a social media marketer can scale.

The challenge though, becomes in ensuring that both the content and timing are relevant. Assuming that the content you want to share is evergreen, continue reading!

smqueue gives you control over the wording of your post (including adding a photo and shortening your link), how frequently and at what times to post and when to expire content.

You decide the wording, posting frequency and expiration of content.

The only drawbacks are that you must have at least 100 entries for the recurring queue to begin, and you cannot brand the shortened URL.

By regularly adding new content to the queue and moderating it, I have found smqueue to be an excellent way of augmenting what I am already doing in social media marketing, with no additional effort other than the setup.

Neal Schaffer is the president of Maximize Your Social, author of Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing: Understanding, Leveraging and Maximizing LinkedIn.

#9: Nimble

Viveka von Rosen

I started using Nimble because I'm one of those social media "super connectors" whose network is just way too big. Even with tagging and lists and all the other ways I have of segmenting my audience, I just couldn't keep up with all of my key connections.

Nimble does a really good job of helping me find and engage with my important contacts via the Engagement Opportunities From Important Contacts feature on their homepage. I don't know what algorithm they use, but its freaky accurate!

Nimble also lets you keep a list of activities to do and people to stay in touch with, as well as track leads, prospects and deals.

With Nimble's Deals function I can pull a prospect from my contacts, add details of our potential deal, track that deal through its different stages and either close the deal or if it falls apart, make notes as to why. And, of course, I can export that information.

Create deals within Nimble.

The tracking is crucial to refining my prospecting funnel so that I close more deals more effectively. (And not as many prospects fall through the giant gaping cracks in my brain.)

Nimble gives me more filters than LinkedIn to sort my contacts, allows me to search keywords and hashtags throughout my social networks, tracks my activities on the calendar feature, lists my messages and lets me sort them. As a bonus, Nimble allows me to delegate work to my assistant and it plays well with HootSuite.

If you haven't tried Nimble yet, you should. It isn't just a vibrant social CRM, it's a one-stop shop for contact, calendar, prospect, deal and even inbox management!

Viveka von Rosen is the author of LinkedIn Marketing: An Hour a Day and known internationally as the "LinkedIn Expert."

#10: BuzzSumo

Lee Odden

BuzzSumo is a free tool you can use to identify the links that are most shared on social networks, as well as influencers for specific topics.

For example, if you want to know the top content by social shares for a certain keyword phrase, BuzzSumo provides social share information that includes Google+ shares, Facebook likes, LinkedIn shares and Twitter shares. You can filter the data by content type (e.g., article, infographic, videos, guest posts and more).

You can also search a domain to find the pages with the most social shares and then filter by Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. This is handy for spot checking your own site and others'.

You can search for the social shares on any URL.

The influencer search option offers a list of people who match your query and includes their Twitter information. You can filter these results by type (e.g., bloggers, influencers, companies and journalists), then export to CSV or Excel for further analysis.

BuzzSumo is definitely a work in progress, but as a free tool, there are some very interesting features and it's really easy to use.

Lee Odden is the CEO of TopRank Online Marketing.

#11: Harvest

Jamie Turner

In the early days of social media, things were much simpler. You'd write a blog post, share it on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and be done with it. But as time has gone on, social media has become more complex and time-consuming.

Today, you might have multiple social media campaigns running for both your own company and for your clients' companies. It's gotten harder to figure out where your time is going (and which client to bill for your efforts). If that's as much of a problem for you as it is for me, then you'll want to check out Harvest.

It's the simplest and easiest time-tracking tool I've found (and I've done plenty of homework on this). The user interface makes it incredibly simple to add a project and track your time. Better still, if you're a consultant, agency or business owner, you can track different projects for different clients and analyze the results. It even has a billing module that allows you to invoice clients for the work.

Tracking your time is easy with Harvest.

In the long run, Harvest has enough features that you can use it to track all of your time, but it's streamlined enough just to track time on your social media campaigns if that's all you need. I love it. Check it out!

Jamie Turner is the CEO of 60 Second Marketer.

#12: Calendly

Douglas Karr

Over the last decade I've amassed quite a following on social media. The process is fairly consistent: Folks follow me, then they listen or watch me in a podcast, video or webinar, and when they need my assistance, they connect. This connection point is critical. People need your help on their schedule, not yours.

In the past, I've been really difficult (if not impossible) to get a hold of. I get dozens of calls and hundreds of email requests every day. If all I did was negotiate common times to connect, I would lose half of my week. Compound that with the back and forth of "What time is good for you?" emails and the time lost is downright frustrating.

The truth is I'm terrible at managing my calendar, so why not let the people who want to connect with me handle it themselves? This is what Calendly does for me.

Let Calendly manage your calendar for you.

When people view my Calendly, they'll see the times I'm available to meet. They can find the date and time that works for them and set it on Calendly, then Calendly synchronizes directly to my Google calendar.

Social media isn't very valuable unless it's leading to opportunity. Calendly helps me find those opportunities!

Douglas Karr is the founder of DK New Media.

#13: Friends+Me

Denise Wakeman

One of my current favorite social media resources is Friends+Me, an automated social sharing tool. While I know the topic of social media automation is controversial, sometimes it makes sense when time is limited and you want to get your message out to several different networks.

Friends+Me enables you to share (repost) your publicly published Google+ posts to Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Tumblr. It's important to note that if your Google+ post is private, Friends+Me will not repost it anywhere.

Friends+Me broadcasts your messages to other networks.

With Friends+Me, you can manage exactly where you want to repost your content. For example, if you want to repost on Facebook but not on your LinkedIn profile or Twitter, you simply tag the post #f and it will only be published on your Facebook page or profile.

Recently, Friends+Me added a scheduling feature that you can choose to enable or disable. By scheduling reposts, you control the day and time they show up on your other networks.

For example, you may not want your Google+ posts to simultaneously publish to your other social profiles. You can easily schedule them to post to those networks as soon as 5 minutes later or up to 3 days later.

You can schedule your Google+ posts with Friends+Me.

Why would you use this tool? If you're active on Google+, you know the conversations are rich and often go deeper than on other networks. When you repost from Google+, it includes a link back to the post on your Google+ profile or page. It's an easy way to encourage your connections to join you on Google+ and build your community there, as well as introduce people to new content and thought leaders.

Denise Wakeman is an online marketing strategist and host of Adventures in Visibility, a live hangout on air helping entrepreneurs boost their visibility on the web.

#14: BuzzFork

Stanford Smith

BuzzFork is a Twitter marketing tool that helps get your profile in front of Twitter users based on common interests. It uses an algorithm to review a user's tweets (based on your criteria), then favorites those tweets from your account.

If you're like me, you pay close attention to people who favorite your tweets and probably follow them back. BuzzFork leverages this social quid pro quo to add targeted followers to your Twitter audience.

I was extremely skeptical about BuzzFork's "favoriting" algorithm, but was pleasantly surprised with the results. Almost all of the favorites were for tweets that I found useful, entertaining and relevant.

Try BuzzFork's favoriting algorithm.

BuzzFork also helps you analyze your recent followers based on their Klout score and interests. This information is useful for discovering popular topics within your Twitter community.

A quick review of my dashboard revealed that productivity is a popular topic, and that prompted me to write several successful articles about it.

You can find out about popular topics in your dashboard.

All of your follower data can be exported, allowing you to segment your recent followers by interests. This comes in handy if you want to promote interest-specific topics to Twitter influencers.

BuzzFork is the perfect tool for bloggers who want to quickly expand their Twitter reach in a smart and personalized way.

Stanford Smith is the co-author of Born to Blog, and offers practical blog and content marketing tips and strategies at Pushing Social.

#15: Newsle

Stephanie Sammons

Newsle has become one of my most favorite social media tools for gathering relevant and important stories about the members of my network. I'm spending time on this site daily.

Newsle is a free tool that finds real published news about real people (it doesn't find tweets or social status updates).

Newsle integrates and follows your LinkedIn connections, personal Facebook connections and email contacts, then scours the web for recently published articles about those people. You can also follow and track online stories about anyone, even those who are outside of your network!

Not only does Newsle show articles about your first-degree network, it goes a step further with the Friends of Friends feature. This is a great way to find new relevant people to contact and build a relationship with.

You can rank the articles that are surfaced by most recent or most interesting in your Newsle dashboard, and you can share the articles with your social networks or via email.

You can share the most recent articles from your dashboard with your social networks.

What works really well is to send a private email to your connection referencing an article you've seen about them in Newsle, or even promote the article publicly to your social networks with a tag or mention. This is a great way to strengthen a relationship and give your connection greater visibility through promotion.

If you're publishing or being quoted in online articles, be sure to submit them to Newsle so you can build your own profile and help others find and follow you.

I'm a huge fan of Newsle as a social media tool that can help you become a smarter marketer. I highly recommend you check it out!

Stephanie Sammons is the founder of Build Online Influence.

#16: Piktochart

John Lee Dumas

I recently discovered Piktochart, an infographic and graphic design app. My favorite thing about the app is that you don't need any design experience to create amazing graphics for your social media posts because Piktochart offers really great resources, including video tutorials.

Piktochart has several themes to choose from, and they offer a free account or a pro account.

There are many themes to choose from.

I've been able to create some really good infographics with just the free account, and they've been great for use in blog posts and across social media to help promote content we've created for our audience.

Here's an example of an infographic I created that walks you through preparing for a Skype video interview. I wouldn't have been able to create it on my own without the app.

Use Piktochart to create an infographic to promote your content.

Piktochart is really an all-around great app that ups your social media game by providing you the opportunity to easily create intriguing infographics for your audience to consume!

John Lee Dumas is the founder and host of EntrepreneurOnFire.

#17: 22Social

Ric Dragon

The team here at DragonSearch has been getting a lot of use lately from the 22Social app for Facebook.

With 22Social, you're able to turn your Facebook business page into a veritable website. You can create multiple content pages that users access via Facebook tabs, and even configure a like gate—the page people see when they haven't liked your page yet.

The app provides a portfolio of layout options and in the process encourages some smart communication. Each layout can include video, photos and text.

22Social offers many layouts to choose from.

22Social has illustrated just how well a Facebook page can act as a website by redirecting their own website back into their Facebook page.

22Social isn't free. It's $2 for the first month, then $22 (of course, right?) per month after that. Considering how it can really turn your Facebook page into a dynamic lead-generation portal, it's a fair deal.

Ric Dragon is the CEO of DragonSearch.

#18: Jelly

Simon Mainwaring

Many a business would be better served with direct connections to their customers. In recent years we've seen the growth of social media and brands using different channels to interact with customers on many levels.

But with so many different questions being asked and answered all at once, a reliable and manageable feedback loop often gets lost in the shuffle. That's where Jelly fits in.

What at first seemed like an app designed to ask friends for answers to homework has grown into a social media experience in which brands can directly appeal to their customers' needs.

Posting a simple question lets your company crowdsource opinions on a specific product, service or issue that you want to know more about.

You can use the Jelly app as a research tool.

Not only does this allow for better managed engagement, but it casts your brand in a positive light because you're interested, listening and responsive.

The true depth of this app is far from being explored, but I see a very positive future for it in the mix of social media channels.

Simon Mainwaring is the CEO of We First and author of the New York Times bestseller We First.

#19: NeedTagger

Kim Garst

Twitter is a major business-building social media platform. The challenge is sifting through the noise to find conversations that matter to you and your business.

If you're using Twitter Advanced Search to connect with potential customers, respond to compliments or complaints and directly market your products or services to people who say they need your solutions, then you are going to love NeedTagger!

NeedTagger does the heavy lifting for you. It's a power search engine built specifically for Twitter. It finds real-time conversations that are taking place about topics you're interested in.

NeedTagger allows you to search for conversations about your target industry.

People might be talking about your products, news stories that touch your niche or even content that is trending. NeedTagger finds them for you.

Kim Garst is the CEO of Boom Social.

#20: Pushover and IFTTT

Paul Colligan

The immediacy of social media can either be empowering or enslaving, depending on what you do with it. As alerts and updates are coming in 24/7, every marketer must decide when to (and when not to) be interrupted with social updates, messages, replies, etc. Too many interruptions and you won't ever get any work done.

Conversely, social emergencies seldom happen on a predetermined schedule.

Ever tried to have a conversation with someone who's always on their phone "in case something happens"? Do you find yourself being that guy (or gal) and wishing you could find a filtering solution that makes sense?

A careful combination of Pushover, a service for sending phone status messages, and the popular service IFTTT, has helped solve this issue for me.

I've set it up so that when certain terms are mentioned on certain social services, I'm alerted right away. When urgent stuff happens, I'm notified on both my iPhone (via notifications) and via a vibrating message on my Pebble Watch.

The combination of Pushover and IFTTT allows you to receive real-time notifications on your Android and iOS devices.

Why the Pebble watch? I find it far less intrusive to quickly glance at a watch versus a phone screen when you're in conversation with someone.

The other stuff I consume on my own terms at a time that makes sense to me.

Paul Colligan is the director of content marketing at Instant Customer.

#21: Swayy

Rick Mulready

If the team that created Swayy is reading this, I'm giving you a virtual high-five right now.

I love Swayy and it's the coolest social media tool I've come across in recent months. It solves the challenge many people have of wanting to consistently find and share valuable content, yet don't have enough hours in the day to discover it.

It's like having your own personal assistant that scours the Internet and finds great content for you (like articles, videos and such), so you can share it with your audience. And not just any content, either. It delivers content that's relevant to your audience and that they're most likely to engage with.

Swayy helps you discover content to share with your audience.

Swayy integrates with your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts.

Like many other tools on the market, it has a few different pricing plans that allow you to scale depending on your needs. The free version is very effective though, and great for giving it a test drive.

Definitely give it a try. It will simplify your social media efforts and I have a feeling you'll want to give the Swayy team a virtual high-five too!

Rick Mulready is the creator of the Inside Social Media Podcast.

#22: Circloscope

Martin Shervington

Google+ circles can require a lot of management. This is why I recommend you use Circloscope (a Chrome extension).

It's the only tool available that helps you tame your circles, turning them into well-curated, useful collections of people and pages.

Using Circloscope, you can uncircle a selection of people whose accounts are no longer active and uncircle a group of people who don't circle you back. These are useful tasks to make sure you're staying up to date with your contacts or freeing up space if you're close to reaching your 5,000-person limit.

Use Circloscope to easily manage your Google+ circles.

Circloscope also lets you find the people engaging with and sharing your Google+ posts or linked content. This is a huge feature because you can quickly see whom you should spend more time connecting with. You can do the same with Google Ripples, but it is a lot more work!

All in all, Circloscope is an essential circle management system for your Google+ toolkit. I don't know how I would manage my profile or pages without it.

Martin Shervington is the author of The Art and Science of Google+ and a marketing consultant.

#23: Songza

Mark Schaefer

I have an unusual and fun suggestion for a great new social tool to try. I have become addicted to an app called Songza.

It's an Internet-style radio station with a social twist. You can find creative and amazing playlists for every possible mood or life situation.

You can find the perfect song to reflect your mood.

The lists are carefully curated by an expert music nerd community and you can comment on the playlists and follow them. So whether you are intently analyzing your tweets, blogging on a quiet Sunday morning, or snapping Instagram photos at a crazy party, you can find the perfect soundtrack to your social media life at Songza!

Mark Schaefer is a college educator, blogger, speaker and consultant who specializes in corporate social media marketing workshops.

#24: Talkwalker

Gini Dietrich

A few months ago, I discovered Talkwalker as a replacement for Google alerts. If you're familiar with Google alerts, the setup will look similar.

The Talkwalker home page has the same functionality, and you can decide what information to look for and how you receive updates.

Talkwalker has the same functionality as Google alerts.

When Talkwalker finds new mentions based on your target words, you receive an email broken down by news and blogs. It provides the title, description and link. It also provides a nifty Tweet button so you can share the content directly from your email.

Email alerts are broken down into news and blogs categories.

To boot, they just launched a HootSuite integration, which means you can monitor all of your queries there instead of in your email.

Talkwalker integrates with HootSuite.

While Google alerts still work, I like the results that come from Talkwalker better. The information is more accurate and provides links Google typically misses.

The only thing it doesn't do is return anything that links to you without mentioning your search query (e.g., if my search query is "Spin Sucks" and someone links to it but calls it "Gini's blog," I won't see it).

Good riddance, Google. We found something better, more accurate and much more convenient.

Gini Dietrich is the founder and CEO of Arment Dietrich.

#25: Hang w/

Joel Comm

Many apps have been used to stream live video to friends and followers, but Hang w/ takes it to the next level by integrating with iOS and Android, as well as delivering the live stream to Facebook's news feed.

As a broadcaster, you can select 3-, 6- or 9-minute "hang" sessions, and enter a custom title for each live video stream.

You can enter a custom title.

Smartphone followers who have push notifications turned on are instantly notified when someone they are following begins a Hang w/, and they can interact with the broadcaster via text chat.

A great way to create spontaneous broadcasts.

The app needs some polish, but I have a great time creating spontaneous broadcasts and engaging with my followers.

Joel Comm is the author of Twitter Power 2.0 and So, What Do You Do?, and host of the Joel Comm Show, a business podcast.

#26: Meddle

Ted Rubin

I started playing around with Meddle lately. It's a hybrid social posting, blogging and curation service, with a focus on making it simple to share insights on content you're reading, while you're reading it.

I like it because it allows me to turn comments I'd typically leave on a blog post—which have limited visibility and virility—into new content that I can share as my own. Meddle also generates versions of my comments for Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, allowing me to complete the content creation and distribution cycle in a minute.

Meddle is a great curation service.

Adding my editorial perspective on content that matters to my followers is a very effective way for me to get my point across without having to write a full blog post. It also saves the comment, most important part of the post/article and the post URL itself in a place and format I can easily access for content creation at a later date.

I'm looking forward to Meddle adding better mobile support, more social networks and the ability to post content straight into my blog, which the CEO at Meddle tells me is in the works.

However, for people who don't have the time, skills or desire to blog, this is a great personal content marketing platform in and of itself.

Ted Rubin is a leading social marketing strategist, keynote speaker, brand evangelist and co-author of Return on Relationship.

#27: tchat.io

Michael Stelzner

I recently discovered a new web-based app called tchat.io. The simple interface is great for Twitter chats because you can tweet from within the app, and it automatically adds the chat's hashtag to all of your tweets.

It's easy to keep track of the conversation because the app only shows tweets related to a specific hashtag (you can switch hashtags on the fly).

You can tweet from within the app.

This app is close to real time and has all of the basic functionality you would expect from any good hashtag-based Twitter chat client.

If you're involved with Twitter chats, tchat.io is definitely worth checking out.

Michael Stelzner is the founder and CEO of Social Media Examiner and My Kids' Adventures.

#28: Canva

Donna Moritz

By far the biggest standout tool for me has been the web-based DIY graphic design tool Canva.

Canva has a healthy library of social media and blog image templates that allow for easy and timely creation of images. No design skills necessary!

Social media templates let you create images quickly and easily.

Canva's Copy feature makes it easy to create not just one image, but a series of images. If you are creating a tip, how-to or quote image for your community, why stop at one? Make a dozen images by "batching" them.

Simply click on the Copy This Page option to produce an exact copy of your image, then edit the new image to replace text or graphics. Repeat as necessary until you have an entire series of images ready to schedule.

Canva is releasing Instagram-style preset filters with the added ability to create your own unique photo effect for your brand (you can see an exclusive sneak peek below). You can copy the photo effect code across all of your images to develop a consistent style for their visual content.

Canva's new Photo Effects allows users to get creative!

With a growing list of features that help you create original, shareable images, I am excited to see Canva become a permanent fixture in the toolbox of social media marketers and community managers.

Donna Moritz is the founder of SociallySorted.

#29: LeadPages

Amy Porterfield

LeadPages is a tool that I use on a near-daily basis. When I was first introduced to this tool, I knew that it would help my email list grow in a big way.

I've used LeadPages for everything including sales pages, product launches, free giveaways, live webinars and so much more. If there's a way to use LeadPages, I've done it!

I most recently used it for launching a product that is not my own. I created a webinar to help people figure out if the product was right for them, then created a LeadPages page for it. Ever since I've been using the countdown timer on webinar registration pages, my conversion rate has skyrocketed.

The LeadPages page created for a webinar.

After people sign up for the webinar, they're redirected to a thank-you page, where I have a video that lets them know they are officially registered. This thank-you page also provides an opportunity for people to like my Facebook page, which helps me stay top of mind in the days leading up to the webinar.

The thank-you page gives people the opportunity to like your Facebook page.

As you know, I feel that Facebook marketing is the best platform for list building and specifically Facebook ads are extremely powerful. I drive all of my ads' traffic to my LeadPages.

Another great thing about LeadPages is that the team is always innovating and offering more features. A couple of the newer features I love are LeadBoxes and LeadLinks.

LeadBoxes can be used on web pages and even in blog posts. To add them to a blog post, all I have to do is add a hyperlink to the post, and when someone clicks on it, a LeadBox pops up with an opportunity for someone to join my email list.

LeadLinks integrates your email service provider with your webinar provider. When you insert the link in an email and a person clicks on it, they're automatically registered for your webinar and tagged in your email system. It's a great thing to use for your existing email list because you don't need to gather names and emails since you already have them.

The bottom line is that LeadPages is a tool that I can't live without!

Amy Porterfield is the co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies and a social media strategist.

Who are these social media pros?

The social media marketing experts who contributed to this article are all speaking at Social Media Marketing World 2014.

You'll hear from 80+ of the world's top social media marketing pros as they reveal their newest social media marketing tips and practical, real-world, proven examples.

Join Chris Brogan (co-author of The Impact Equation), Mari Smith (co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day), Michael Hyatt (author of Platform), Jay Baer (author of Youtility), John Jantsch (author of Duct Tape Marketing), Amy Porterfield (co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies), Mark Schaefer (author of Tao of Twitter), Michael Stelzner (author of Launch) and experts from more than a dozen brands as they reveal proven social media marketing tactics at Social Media Marketing World 2014—Social Media Examiner's mega-conference in beautiful San Diego, California.

You'll be able to take your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, blogging, podcasting and video marketing to an entirely new level.

Join nearly 2,000 fellow marketers at the live mega-conference designed to empower and inspire you with social media marketing tactics—brought to you by Social Media Examiner.

Click here to learn more.

What do you think? Do you use any of these social media tools? What's working well for you today? Please share your thoughts in the box below.

Tags: 22social, buzzfork, calendly, canva, cindy king, circloscope, everyonesocial, friends plus me, hang w, harvest, ifttt, jelly, leadpages, meddle, needtagger, newsle, nimble, optinmonster, piktochart, pocket, powtoon, pushover, rivaliq, shareroot, smqueue, social media tool, songza, swayy, talkwalker, tchat io, tool, vcita

The post 29 Social Media Tools Recommended by the Pros appeared first on Make Money Online With Twitter Marketing.

How to Get Customers to Post Instagram Pictures

Posted: 25 Feb 2014 02:00 AM PST

Thibaut Davoult

By Thibaut Davoult
Published February 25, 2014

Do you want to use Instagram to add value to your brand?

Are you looking for innovative ways to get your customers (and employees) to post Instagram pictures?

Then keep reading because I'm going to show you four ways to bring your "A game" to Instagram and wow your fans.

Why Customer Instagram Pictures?

Instagram was the fastest-rising social media channel for brands in 2013.

You probably already know it's an effective platform for branding and marketing your products and growing your community.

But what you may not know is that Instagram is a powerful tool to collect customer-created content you can reuse to your advantage.

#1: Enhance Your Online (and Offline) Store With Customer Photos

Visuals greatly impact the behavior of shoppers. Most brands just snap a photo of the product and share it across all social channels, which may work sometimes. But you can take it a step further by crowdsourcing photos on Instagram.

When customers see photos of other "regular" people using a product, they're more likely to buy. Why? This kind of social proof is a powerful motivator. Visitors gain trust by seeing others use the products they are about to buy.

Let's take the clothing industry, for example. The biggest mistake clothing brands make on Instagram is showing bland product photos—clothing worn by hired models, usually with a white background.

Nasty Gal's The Click gallery powered by olapic features selfies of fans wearing the brand's clothes.

Nasty Gal clothing company saw an opportunity and started showcasing their fans' Instagram pictures on their website via olapic. The company has had a 5% increase in overall conversions since implementing the olapic galleries.

#2: Make Instagram Fan Photos Into Stop-Motion Videos

Vine may have made stop-motion video easy to create and easy to consume, but Instagram video is winning the popularity contest. Your fans are using Instagram to take the photos you're using, so it makes sense to share your videos there, where they're most likely to see them.

[embedded content]

Lexus reached a younger, tech-savvy audience by using its fans' Instagram images to create this video.

Lexus took advantage of fan images for their aptly titled #LexusInstaFilm (shown above) where a group of 200 Instagrammers met on a racetrack to capture the brand's new IS F model. Lexus pooled those photos and created a short video to share on Instagram and other social channels.

#3: Create Ads With Customer Instagram Submissions

In 2012, Instagram proposed changes to its terms of service that would allow it to sell your photos to brands for advertising purposes. There was uproar from the masses and Instagram quickly changed its tune.

Based on the uproar, you'd think Instagrammers wouldn't want their images used in advertising at all. Who in their right mind would voluntarily send his or her own photos to brands so they can use them for advertising? A lot of people.

It's all about choice and control. People are willing to give out their photos to be used as ads if the transaction between brands and fans is clear from the start. It helps if the fan gets something in return.

Wouldn't you love to see your name in lights and get some new followers to boot?

That's what Ben & Jerry's banked on with their Capture Euphoria campaign. The social-friendly ice cream company ran a simple hashtag campaign to gather earned content. Fans were invited to share their pictures using the #CaptureEuphoria hashtag, then the photos were voted on and the best won a prize.

This is where it gets interesting. What was the prize in question? Taking the winner's Instagram photo and transforming it into a real-life ad (including print, billboards and bus-stop posters) that included the winner's Instagram username.

#4: Recruit Employees

Attracting and retaining talent are challenging for any brand. Most companies don't consider Instagram as a recruiting tool, but Levi's had great success with this unique idea.

The key to a great Instagram feed that people want to follow is sharing expertly shot Instagram photos on a regular basis. Levi's leveraged their popular feed to lead a model-scouting campaign.

Levi's launched an Instagram campaign to seek new talent.

Levi's used photo and video sharing as a way to gather applications. They cut out the middlemen and directly sourced candidates via Instagram selfies.

Levi's told fans up front that anyone using #iamlevis in their pictures or captions was granting Levi's permission to use their photos in campaigns. Applicants knowingly used the hashtag to notify the brand of their interest in the job.

To track applications, Levi's recruiters ran hashtag searches to scan applicants.

You could easily apply this type of campaign to any brand need. For example, nonprofits could do the same to hire volunteers.

What ideas do you have?

The diverse ways to get customers and fans to create content is one of the reasons Instagram is such a rich and growing platform for social marketers. Marketers are sure to appreciate this earned media and the level of engagement with their audience.

Does your audience share what they like with you online? Then you may want to look into ways to leverage this on Instagram.

What's even better is that most of the examples here cost little to nothing and are easily replicated by businesses of all sizes.

What about you? Have you ever worked with Instagram fans to implement a grassroots marketing campaign? We'd love to hear about your experiences and ideas. Please leave your thoughts and comments below!

Tags: crowdsourced content, fan content, image marketing, instagram, instagram campaign, instagram image, instagram marketing, instagram picture, instagram strategy, thibaut davoult

The post How to Get Customers to Post Instagram Pictures appeared first on Make Money Online With Twitter Marketing.

How Constant Contact Uses Pinterest to Reach a B2B Market

Posted: 24 Feb 2014 08:18 PM PST

Louise Julig

By Louise Julig
Published October 16, 2013

"You can use any social media channel for B2B," said Erica Ayotte, social media marketing manager at Constant Contact.

"Anyone who says you can't is not being creative enough."

She should know. Her team has grown their Pinterest following to over 18,000 in less than two years.

How does a company that is not retail and not inherently visual use Pinterest to reach a B2B target audience?

The keys are to expand your idea of what your brand is, think visually and have a curating mindset. Here's how Constant Contact appeals to their small-business market on Pinterest.

Constant Contact has 92 Pinterest boards with over 4,000 pins.

Organization: Constant Contact

Social Media Handles and Stats:

Highlights:

Added 15,000 Pinterest followers from January to September, 2013
Pinterest is in the top five traffic referral sources for their website
"Quotes for Small Businesses Owners" board ranks second on Google search results for "small business quotes"
Pinterest page ranks higher than LinkedIn company page in Google search results for Constant Contact
Recipient of 2013 BtoB Magazine Social Media Marketing Award for Pinterest

Expand Your Idea of What Your Brand Is

Ayotte urges B2B companies to take a wider view of what their business is really about when thinking about Pinterest.

Constant Contact is a software company serving mostly small- and medium-sized businesses and nonprofits. Over half of their customers have fewer than five employees, and 70 percent of them have fewer than 10 employees.

In taking in a wider perspective of what they do, Ayotte said that they are really about helping small businesses achieve their goals.

"At the end of the day, it's not about software," she said. Taking this expanded view helped her team identify other things their customers would be interested in that could be pinned.

Quotes and tips are very successful for them on Pinterest. The Quotes for Small Business Owners board currently ranks second in Google Search for "small business quotes."

Constant Contact’s quotes board ranks second in Google search.

Marketing humor is another popular board. Since most of their customers are small businesses for whom marketing resources are stretched thin, it's not surprising that quotes, tips and humor do well.

Marketing humor is popular with Constant Contact’s followers.

Pinterest is more suited to evergreen content than Facebook or Twitter. Ayotte suggests that businesses starting out begin with a few boards with evergreen topics and slowly add content as they get a feel for what their audience is interested in. If you're getting repins, it's resonating with the audience. If not, try something else.

"If you find topics related to your business, more often than not your audience will be interested in them as well," she said. "You don't have to be so on-brand that it hurts."

Think Visually

Once you've identified topics your audience is interested in, how do you make them visually appealing?

If you're a B2B company, particularly in service or software, you may think that your business does not have visual content to use on Pinterest.

"You really have to be very creative," said Ayotte. Constant Contact is a master at creating visually appealing content from quotes, tips and statistics.

Corporate community manager Danielle Cormiere will often use PicMonkey to create word images for quotes, statistics, etc., and link the image to the source.

The quote below came from the Brian Tracy Quote of the Day newsletter that Constant Contact made into a visually appealing pin.

Creating illustrated quotes is one way to create visual content for pinning.

You can even pin inherently non-visual content such as press releases by pulling out a key statistic and using a stock image to create a striking visual.

Constant Contact created this visual to link to a press release on their blog.

Another technique is to create and/or link to infographics, but split them up into multiple pins. This increases readability and helps populate your boards, which also helps with SEO.

Splitting an infographic into different pins is a way to populate a board.

Constant Contact has found that Pinterest boards are indexed quickly and rank high in search results. More content per board creates more traffic, which helps in search results.

For businesses getting started on Pinterest, Ayotte urges them to focus on quality over quantity.

"If you pin things that don't look good, then you're defeating the purpose," she said. "First and foremost, Pinterest is a visual platform."

Have a Curating Mindset

A fundamental principle for social media success is to avoid talking about yourself all the time. The same applies to pinning on Pinterest.

"Part of the reason that Pinterest has grown so much for us is because we share generously and are a great curator," said Ayotte.

Since Pinterest is used for bookmarking, repinning great evergreen content is a good strategy. It helps populate your own boards, as well as attract followers who trust you will bring them relevant content.

Constant Contact repins from a variety of other sources.

Constant Contact also has shared regional boards where local offices pin content.

Shared regional office boards are a way to bring in more pinnable content.

Another strategy is to get your customers involved as guest pinners. During the holidays, Constant Contact put out a call that they were looking for customers to contribute holiday tips pins and included them as guest pinners on a shared board. Involving your customers helps you fill out your boards and shows you care about what is important to them.

Constant contact solicited customers as guest pinners to a shared board.

Pinterest's Shopping Mindset Is Good for B2B

VentureBeat reported that Pinterest drives more revenue per click than Facebook or Twitter. Ayotte said people come to Pinterest with a shopping mindset, using it as a pre-shopping cart.

VentureBeat reports Pinterest creates more revenue per click than Facebook and Twitter.

Ayotte believes people are more likely to engage with brands on Pinterest, which is why B2B companies should consider using the platform for branding and education. Pinterest is currently one of the top five referral sources for their website.

Constant Contact’s Pinterest metrics from a two-week period in September 2013.

"Is it our primary network? No. But as a secondary network goes, it's a pretty darn good one," she said. "It's driving a lot of traffic, it's creating awareness and it's supporting our brand."

Over to You

What do you think? Can you think of ways your B2B brand can connect with customers on Pinterest? Include your comments and questions below.

Tags: b2b marketing, case study, constant contact, content curation, evergreen content, louise julig, pinterest, pinterest board, pinterest marketing, pinterest marketing plan, pinterest strategy, printerest marketing strategy, social media marketing, social media strategy

Massacres That Matter – Part 1 – ‘Responsibility To Protect’ In Egypt, Libya And Syria
Massacres That Matter – Part 2 – The Media Response On Egypt, Libya And Syria
National demonstration: No attack on Syria – Saturday 31 August, 12 noon, Temple Place, London, UK

The post How Constant Contact Uses Pinterest to Reach a B2B Market appeared first on Make Money Online With Twitter Marketing.

Instagram Direct: This Week in Social Media

Posted: 24 Feb 2014 01:57 PM PST

Cindy King

By Cindy King
Published December 14, 2013

Welcome to our weekly edition of what's hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.

What's New This Week?

Instagram Introduces Instagram Direct: Instagram Direct gives you "a new way to send photo and video messages to friends."

[embedded content]

Twitter Enables Photos With Direct Messages: With Twitter's latest iOS and Android app updates, you can now "send and receive photos via direct messages and swipe back and forth between timelines."

You can now share and view photos via direct message (DM) on your Twitter mobile phone app.

Twitter Introduces Broad Match for Keyword Targeting for Ads: Twitter advertisers can use the new broad match, sentiment filtering and negative keyword match feature "to support the increasingly sophisticated needs around keyword targeting."

For example, a coffee shop that wants to reach coffee enthusiasts can run a campaign targeting the broad match keywords "love coffee."

Facebook Rolls Out Full Availability of New Like and Share Buttons: After testing, Facebook rolled out the new Like button and extended it to the Follow and Like Box plugins as well.

In early tests over the past month after launching the new Like and Share buttons, Facebook has "seen more than a 5% lift in likes and shares across the web."

Google Is Testing +Post Ads: "+Post ads allow a brand to take a piece of their public Google+ content, like a photo, video or even a hangout, and with a few clicks, turn it into a display ad that can run across the more than 2 million sites in the Google Display Network." This new feature is currently only offered to a select group of partners.

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Your LinkedIn Inbox Gets a New Look: LinkedIn "started to roll out a new, freshly redesigned and easier to navigate inbox experience to help you better manage and build your professional relationships on LinkedIn."

LinkedIn's new inbox gives you a "cleaner and more streamlined design with larger pictures to make it easier to follow and manage your professional conversations."

Foursquare No Longer Allows Private Check-ins on iOS7: In the latest iOS7 app update, Foursquare decided to remove the ability to privately check in. Private check-ins are still available on other platforms.

Here's a cool social media tool worth noting:

Circle: An app to show you local news and events from helpful and positive people who are near you right now.

Use Circle to find out what's happening near you.

Weekly Marketing Tip

Here we bring you weekly marketing tips from Michael Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner:

[embedded content]
How to Use Video on Sales Pages

Other Mentions

Introducing Social Media Marketing World: 60+ pros help you master social media marketing! Join Chris Brogan (co-author of The Impact Equation), Mari Smith (co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day), Michael Hyatt (author of Platform), Jay Baer (author of Youtility), John Jantsch (author of Duct Tape Marketing), Amy Porterfield (co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies), Mark Schaefer (author of Tao of Twitter), Michael Stelzner (author of Launch) and experts from more than a dozen brands as they reveal proven social media marketing tactics at Social Media Marketing World 2014—Social Media Examiner's mega-conference in beautiful San Diego, California.

[embedded content]
Check out this overview of the conference or click here for more details.

What do you think? Please share your comments below.

Tags: cindy king, circleapp, Facebook button, foursquare private check in, google +post ad, instagram direct, linkedin inbox, social media news, twitter broad match, twitter photo

The post Instagram Direct: This Week in Social Media appeared first on Make Money Online With Twitter Marketing.

Facebook Changes Like Buttons: This Week in Social Media

Posted: 24 Feb 2014 07:39 AM PST

Cindy King

By Cindy King
Published November 9, 2013

Welcome to our weekly edition of what's hot in social media news. To help you stay up-to-date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.